There’s been a lot of talk recently on the marketing of flyball.  Let’s put aside the U-FLI vs. NAFA for a moment and talk about (as Lisa at Prop-a-Ganda put it)” Big F” Flyball.

All of us have had that moment when someone asks us about flyball. Most people I’ve spoken with have seen agility, disc or dock diving, but flyball? not so much.

The general tone of the various blogs, logs, boards and lists is that we need to get flyball more in the public eye.  There are a couple of main ways to increase expose of flyball to the general public:  TV and other media appearances and event sponsorship.

Why aren’t we on TV?  After all, flyball is fun, fast paced and easy to watch. We regularly compete about 20 minutes from my hometown and my mom has, over the years, brought almost my entire extended family to watch flyball.  They always have a good time.

And what about sponsorships?  In California, there are a few kibble companies that regularly donate to raffles and provide samples.  Hyper Flight has many of its tournaments sponsored by Dinovite.  And after the success of the CanAm, NAFA management is actively courting corporate sponsors for next year’s event.  The sheer number of people and dogs who play flyball and the amount of stuff we all use could be a great sponsorship opportunity for any number of companies. Vet Wrap?  Tuff Spun?  Wilson or Penn tennis balls?

But there’s a downside to being in the public eye.  Increased publicity comes with costs and the flyball community may not be willing to let strangers into our “living room”.

Performance Mixes.  Someone on an online forum once called borderjacks “engineering the world’s worst housepet”.  People have said to me that all borderstaffies must be “high-energy nuts”.  Yet they are darn cute!  Will increased television coverage and print sponsorship lead to more John Q. Publics getting dogs they may not be able to handle?  Is that something that the flyball world needs or wants?

Flyball families tend to be large. Everyone has heard the response, “you have HOW many dogs?” Many folks may hide or forget to mention the number of dogs we own because of county rules, icky neighbors or just plain shame in a world where most people think three is a lot of dogs. Will increased public events also increase the scrutiny of flyball families?

Bad training methods and backyard flyball. Every year, flyball gets faster.  Touch N Go broke the 15-second barrier in 2009 and more and more teams are crowding into the sub-16 division.  When my Google alerts pulls up a bad training video or a forum post about learning flyball from someone who doesn’t play, I’ll admit it makes me nervous.  There’s so much that goes into a great race with a super fast team.  I hope that flyball on TV would increase the number of people contacting clubs for lessons and classes but how many people will be making a box or buying the ones available on the internet and teaching themselves flyball?  I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, it could go either way.

So should we push for more “Big F” flyball publicity?  Or should we leave individual teams or regions to decide whether they seek out sponsorships and public appearances?  Can we increase interest (and revenue) without opening the sport to public scrutiny?

Tracy

Lisa from the Flyball Prop-A-Ganda blog wrote an article that everyone should read titled, How NAFA Works.  I think everyone should read it because it’s very insightful.  Moreover, it brings to light something that I need to explain about the Flyball Blog.

My Job

I look at my job on the Flyball Blog as kind of like the news media.  If someone tells me something, I do my best to investigate, try to find other sources to verify, and then report it.  I have talked with board members privately about different issues and some have been very candid while others have not.  Other than this private contact to verify or get additional information, I rarely contact the board about anything.  However, I will and do contact them if it deals with my club or me personally but this contact is different from something that I’m dealing with on the blog.

Suggestions to the Board

I don’t submit rule changes or suggestions and pretty much stay out if it, but this doesn’t mean that I don’t feel strongly about some issues.  I look at this blog as a way to put forth ideas and spark debate on wide variety of issues and topics.  However, it is important for everyone to know that I don’t put forth suggestions to the board.  If you feel strongly on a topic or issue that you see here or on other blogs, I encourage you to take them to the board.

If you have a topic or issue that you are thinking of taking to the board, I would be happy to post them on this forum for discussion.  Like Lisa explained in her article about board members not posting comments to the Flyball blogs, it doesn’t mean that they don’t read them.  I know that board members do read articles on this blog and most likely others.

Conclusion

I have explained how I look at my job on this forum.  Just like the news media, they report the news but they try to not to be the news.  I look at this blog in that same way.  I look to you, the Flyball enthusiast, to put forth your ideas and suggestions to the NAFA Board or the owners of U-FLI.  Together we can make Flyball better for everyone.

Larry

What would happen if NAFA was forced to declare its most recent election “invalid”?

Would the earth quake?  Would the sky fall?  Would it be the end of Flyball?  I don’t believe any of those things would happen but, here is what I do believe.  NAFA is sitting on a Time Bomb and its name is the 2009 Board Elections.

Two incumbent members of the NAFA Board who were campaigning for re-election were listed on the NAFA website on the Election/Awards committee.  The By-Laws do not require an Awards committee but, they do require an Election Committee and Board members who are up for re-election are barred from serving on the Election Committee.  This is specific in the By-Laws and has legal consequences for NAFA if it is not followed.

Soon after the ballots were mailed out to the delegates, NAFA officials received complaints from Club Owners that the ballots were not in compliance with the NAFA Corporate Policies and Procedures.  The complaints were specific enough in nature and great enough in number to warrant this post to the Flyball list by Dale Smith, Election Committee Chair:

I’ve gotten a couple questions on the new consolidated format I used for the ballots this year, so I’d like to take a few minutes and provide some further information.

Years ago, NAFA used to send a letter to Club owners with the start of each new racing year, requiring them to assign their earned delegate votes to individual delegates within their Club. Owners who failed to assign their delegates within 30 days, lost the delegate votes they earned. When election time rolled around, individual ballots were mailed to each assigned delegate - completely independent of the Club owner.  Around 2003, the NAFA Board of Directors enacted a change to assign all delegate votes to the Club owner. This prevented Club owners from losing delegates for failing to assign them and reduced the number of mailing addresses and the amount of mail that NAFA had to deal with.

With this change, the Club owner became the sole representative of their Club in all NAFA elections. Some Club owners still consult with other members of their Club in delegate voting matters, while others act as the sole representative of their Club. NAFA does not get involved in internal Club politics and supports the choice of the Club owner in how they deal with delegate voting matters. Even with these changes, however, NAFA continued to mail separate ballots to the Club owner - one for each vote to which they were entitled.

This practice changed in the mid-2000’s as more and more items outside of annual elections were sent to delegate vote. For these delegate votes, the ballots were consolidated to a single piece of paper containing multiple votes. Club owners still retained the choice of consulting with their Club if they desired before they cast the votes assigned to them.

This year, faced with mailing almost 2000 pieces of paper, I chose to consolidate the annual ballot into a single piece of paper for each Club owner. This multi-vote ballot represents all the delegate votes earned by that Club, and much like the other delegate votes, allows the Club owner to consult with others if they choose, before casting the votes assigned to them.

The unique part of the annual ballot is the number of choices provided on the ballot. Each ballot contains not only the Board of Directors candidates, but also the Clyde Moore Memorial Hall of Fame and Regional MVP choices as well. It was not possible to design a ballot that provided an individual choice for each vote for each candidate, as has been done with past consolidated ballots. In doing some research into the past three annual elections, I found that only one or two instances existed in each election where a group of ballots that represented multiple votes for the same Club were not voted identically. The trade-off I chose was to keep the ballot readable and simple for the vast majority that appear to vote all their ballots identically, while providing an option for a Club owner to “split” their multi-vote ballot into individual votes if they wish to vote them independently.

I should also emphasize, that in doing the ballot research, I was unable to ascertain which Clubs or individuals choose to vote as a block and which do not. The relationship between a ballot and who it was mailed to is broken as soon as the ballot is cast. This a fundamental tenet of the NAFA Electronic Balloting system, to protect the privacy of the voter and the integrity of the election.

This morning, I added a function to the NAFA balloting page to allow a holder of a multi-vote ballot to split the ballot on the website without contacting NAFA. If you experience any issues with this function, please drop me a note. Once you vote one or more of the ballots I cannot help you as the information needed to fix an issue goes away when the ballot is actually voted.

As before, you can still contact NAFA at flyball@flyball.org and we will split a ballot for you if you wish. If you have questions about this year’s ballot, feel free to drop a note to flyball@flyball.org or to me personally. I hope you will find this year’s ballot easier to use than in year’s past and I encourage everyone who has earned a delegate vote, to use it. These votes are one of your primary voices in this organization and we certainly value the participation of everyone in NAFA flyball to shape this organization for the future.

Dale G. Smith

That would seem to answer all questions and ease any doubts but, I have it on good authority that it did not.

Because, while an invitation is extended through this very public post to “feel free” to ask any questions whatsoever, the truth is that specific questions and requests that were posed to the NAFA Board by participating candidates remain unanswered (non-responsive) to this day.

Since we are nearly two months post-election, it must be assumed that there will be no answer from the NAFA Board that will impact the results in any manner.  Unfortunately, the NAFA Board itself knows that there are valid concerns that remain unaddressed.  I guess they are hoping that those who have a valid case alleging that this most recent election is invalid will just go away.

While that would simplify life for the NAFA Board, is this scenario in the best interests of NAFA?

I don’t think so because public trust in our elected NAFA Leadership is the heart of this issue.  These issues need to be addressed in a manner that is fair to all parties concerned, i.e. NAFA Delegates, NAFA Candidates, and NAFA Officials.

NAFA should contact all the Candidates who participated in the 2009 election and hold a teleconference meeting identifying each of these issues and propose a settlement agreeable to all the parties concerned.  This will remove uncertainty, protect NAFA, and it’s the right thing to do.

Larry

Training a good box turn has always been the most difficult challenge for most Flyball trainers, and I am no exception.   So when someone asked me about Wall training I was eager to learn what I could.  Since I didn’t know that much about this training, I posted something on the i-Flyball Facebook page and quickly had a few comments:

I have two bcs, one trained with the ‘traditional’ method, props and the whole shebang, box turn lovely but slow and wide. The second one trained ‘on the wall’, quick, tight and snappy turns, hardly any props except for striding. Love the method, will never look back. ~ Gosia Skowron

… Properly done, a wall turn should result in a quick, efficient and snappy box turn without the “hang” or “pause” that you see some dogs do on the box. It is very difficult for a dog to “pause” on a vertical surface, so very early on they learn that they can’t do that.  ~ Stephanie Minnella

So my interest in this method was instantly peaked.  I went off and tried to find as much information as I could.  I can’t thank Stephanie Minnella enough for providing me with much of the information you will read about this method.  Additionally, if you search on YouTube you can find some pretty good videos of dogs performing this method.  However, be careful because they may not be executing the method properly.

One of the best reasons for training this method came from Stephanie herself:

A lot of the point of teaching a wall turn is not necessarily to teach the dog to TURN off of the wall, but to teach the concept of their back feet having to leave the ground in order to pull it off. If you think about it, a lot of box turn “issues” that you see in dogs stem from the dog’s butt being too low on the box. The wall teaches them very early on that their back feet have to leave the ground and go UP onto something, which then carries over to the box.

Training the Wall

As with most box training, it is best to use this method as the “foundation before the dog moves to actually turning on the box.”  I’ve said this before in one of my other training post, but it has been my experience that once the dog starts turning on a box it is very difficult to retrain a proper turn, and this training method is no exception.

With that said, I will explain this method even though I have not trained any of my dogs this way.  I have a young dog that I’m going to start working with just to get some experience with this, but she is already running and was trained on the box using the prop method.  She has a pretty good turn but it tends to get sloppy when she gets tired.  As I explained in the previous paragraph, I’m not expecting any great improvements in her turn but it will help me and I don’t think it will hurt her to learn it.

As with most dog training, the clicker is your best friend so you will start off teaching your dog to touch the end of a touch stick.  They should be very excited about the stick and you should click and treat for a good long while with this.  It’s also important that they be highly motivated to a tug or other such motivator.  You can use the click and treat method for the tug too if they are not already motivated in this regard.

Once the dog is touch stick trained and has good motivator training, you are ready to begin.  You will then use the stick to teach them to go over and back through a wide jump prop.  However, you should take the prop away before going to the wall because the dog could get hurt if they fall on the jump.

Stephanie said that “it is important which hand you hold your stick in, how high you hold the stick, where you stand, how you step when you call your dog off the wall….”

Since my dog has already been trained on an adjustable chute (see the i-Flyball website for plans), I plan to start there.  My dog turns right off of the box, so I’m going start on my dog’s right side when we are both facing the chute.  I’m going to start this training with the chute in the full upright position which is very close to 90 degrees but has a slight slant.  I’m going to hold my tug in my left hand and use touch stick and touch the top part of the chute and then when my dogs jumps up on the chute I’m going to quickly pull this stick off the chute and have my dog grab the tug that is in my left hand.  I’m going to work on this for a while to get the right response from my dog before moving to the wall.

This may or may not be how most people teach this but hopefully people will comment with their experiences.

You will then want to place some tape on the wall as a mark as to how high your dog should be jumping.  Stephanie has the best words to describe this:

The tape should go on the wall at the same level as the dog’s elbows when the dog is “standing up.” What I usually do is walk the dog up to the wall, take his front feet and place them up against the wall. Then I take note of where his elbows are and place the tape there. Don’t have the dog STRETCHING up; just a relaxed stand with its feet on the wall is fine.

I plan on continuing as I described above but instead of the chute I will use the wall and tape.  I also plan to use some matting that I will attach to the wall or maybe plywood.  I know my dog and she will know that without the matting it’s not the same.  I will let you all know how things work out for us by posting comments in the future.

Other Methods

I have seen video of people using a target like a big X made from tape and stuck to a wall.  I’m not sure how effective this method is since the dog can tend to go wide.  Following the stick off the wall seems to me to be a better method but I would love to see comments on this.

One other method is to use a tug on the wall which does not seem like a very good method either, and Stephanie has some words on this too:

The problem with using a tug rather than that stick is that your arms are short (compared to how long your “arm” is when you are holding the stick). So when you use your arm to hold the tug on the wall, your dog is going to be quicker than you are, and you won’t be able to get your short arm far enough off the wall quickly enough to achieve the result that you want. Some people also affix a ball to the end of the stick. Personally I do not agree with that. Lots of clicker work and the dog will like the stick without any ball on it.

So this is a work in progress for me and I hope that others that have used this method will provide other comments.

Larry

Addendum: Stephanie did stress the importance of finding a seminar for this training which I failed to mention in the original post.   I do believe a seminar would be very beneficial and I would love to hear from anyone that could provide that service and would not mind traveling.

Is it time for NAFA to reform its Voting System?

I don’t normally guest-blog on someone else’s website but, Larry asked some provocative questions in Let the People Vote.

“Isn’t it past time that NAFA let the people vote?…..It doesn’t seem fair to me that, we the people, the ones who pay our tournament fees and participate in this sport have no voice……why should club owners, judges, and board members be the only ones that have a vote?”

To date, there are over 50 comments on this article and more web traffic to The Flyball Blog than at any other time or any other subject!  And yet, no one has offered any compelling evidence why we should not change this system that we have right now. Commentators have offered their “opinions” as to why they oppose changing what we have but, they have been unable to provide any solid evidence that the current system is what’s “best” for NAFA.

The System is Broken

Larry has courageously reported that there may exist some voting “irregularities” in the most recent election for NAFA. In “The Hanging Chad of Flyball”, we are made aware that this year’s ballot was changed so that all a club’s votes were tabulated on one piece of paper.  Did this change “confuse” voters or tabulators in any way causing an incorrect tabulation of the votes? Did anyone vote online thinking they were casting ALL their votes for one candidate but, in the final tabulations, perhaps only one vote counted? Were the paper ballots that were mailed in correctly tabulated?

Questions left unanswered are: “Did this ballot conform to our rulebook? “Delegate voting may be conducted by paper ballot, electronic balloting, or a combination of both.” Does a single ballot violate this rule since “a combination of both” could not be accomplished with a single ballot?”

The word from a Board member was that voting patterns over the last three elections showed that only a few clubs split their votes, so only a single sheet of paper was sent to each club to save money. Who would be against “saving money” as well as the hard work burdening our volunteers with mailing out all that paper? …on the other hand, are we so preoccupied with saving dollars that we fail to respect the “rights” of a minority to split their votes or cast their votes in a “combination of electronic and paper”? …and, if our volunteers who work to present us our ballots, mail them out and count the results to present at the AGM are “overburdened”, why aren’t we recruiting more volunteers to help with the task? Or, commission an outside Accounting or Law Firm to do this (as provided for in our By-Laws)?

The History of NAFA Voting

NAFA used to send a letter to Club owners with the start of each new racing year, requiring them to assign their earned delegate votes to individual delegates within their Club. When election time came, these assigned delegates each received their own unique ballot from NAFA. Each delegate could consult with their club in order to determine how they should cast their vote but, filling it out and mailing it in or registering their vote electronically was the sole responsibility of each individual delegate.

Around 2003, the NAFA Board of Directors enacted a change to assign all delegate votes
to the Club owner. This saved time and money because instead of mailing out all those ballots individually, the number of envelopes was reduced to the number of “active” clubs. But, it conferred upon “Club Owners” a super status of sorts. Instead of just one ballot, they held the power of ALL of a Club’s earned votes. For some, this is not a problem. They simply distributed those accumulated ballots among their club members until they ran out of ballots or members. Others discussed the votes among their members and maybe even sought out a consensus among them. Still, others who run their organizations in an autocratic fashion probably simply voted those ballots any way they saw fit.

The bottom line to all this is: For the purpose of saving “work” and “money”, NAFA reduced each club to a single “delegate” and whatever that delegate did with a club’s earned “vote(s)” was OK with NAFA. NAFA does not get involved in the internal structure or business of the individual clubs.

Weighted Voting

Why do clubs “earn” votes in the first place? This dates back to the basics on how NAFA organized and promoted the sport of Flyball.

Flyball didn’t develop in a vacuum. All kinds of dog sports have been organized for years and years prior to Flyball. They were all organized in some kind of “club” form. As an example, each breed recognized by the American Kennel Club (AKC) has its own “parent club” that dictates their unique “breed standard” to the AKC. There are also local kennel clubs that organized on a geographic basis that were interested in putting on “Dog Show” events and they sought “sanctioning” from either the AKC as an all-breed event or from a club organized around promoting one specific breed.

The AKC also sanctions dog obedience events and confers “titles” earned in these activities. These events are organized and hosted by clubs whose purpose for existing was promoting dog obedience training and competition.

Flyball “evolved” out of clubs who existed to promote training dogs and competing. So, first came the clubs and then came Flyball. …and then came NAFA. NAFA was founded by 8 dog obedience clubs who were able to enter 12 “teams” in demonstrations of Flyball at Horse Show events. By organizing “NAFA”, they were able to promote the sport beyond Detroit and the Toronto/Hamilton area of Ontario, Canada. And, they governed their affairs through the “delegate” system. The one dog obedience club that was able to field 4 teams of dogs and handlers enjoyed more influence in decision making since they were simply larger in size.

That is the “roots” of the # of delegates earned is pegged to the # of teams entered in NAFA events.

Why do NAFA Board members, Regional Directors and Head Judges have a vote above and beyond their Club’s vote?

The short answer is that NAFA always allowed person’s with a “special interest in Flyball” the right to vote in its elections. The reason needs some explanation.

Owning a team or being a team captain is always fraught with risk of losing team members or their cooperation. Becoming a Head Judge for NAFA didn’t require you remain active with a club or dog. Same goes for RD or Board member. Why should you lose your right to vote in NAFA affairs if you are working for NAFA as a volunteer but, your team leaves you? The Board decided that NAFA volunteers working as Judges or RDs, BoD’s should be considered “delegates” separate from affiliation with any unique club.

The end result of years of accumulation of “votes” by a club is this: Some clubs recognized that they could increase their influence in NAFA affairs by stuffing the ballot box in all kinds of creative ways. You earn one vote up to two votes for hosting a tournament so, make sure you host one event on Saturday and a second on Sunday and that equals two votes for your club. Make sure you enter enough teams/events to earn 6 votes; now 2 + 6 = 8 votes. Someone wants to be a Judge? Great, add another vote for your club! Want to host more events than just two? Register another club in your name just for hosting events and you can get 2 more votes.

I am not making fun of the many, many clubs out there who enjoy Flyball and work hard to put on events for all of us to enjoy. Not at ALL! What I am pointing out is how the system has been worked by some people/clubs to gain an advantage, perhaps within a Region, that probably has skewed the tabulations several times. Is this “fair” to the clubs who have fewer resources than these “Super” clubs?

The Problem for NAFA

As long as my club’s delegate/team owner was willing to provide a unique ballot to as many of our club’s members as NAFA would calculate we had earned so that we each, individually, could vote them as we saw fit, I thought that was “fair”. …but, NAFA added an extra burden to this year’s election cycle that I think very few people are aware of.

This year, we shifted from voting our ballots earned in racing year 2008 to include racing year 2009!  My team owner and I attended the Board meeting in Detroit where implementation of these voting calculations were discussed. The logistical problems facing the Technology and Election Committees were enormous. Before earned delegates for each active club could be tabulated, all racing results from all sanctioned events had to be in NAFA’s possession. The racing year ended 09/30/2009. Any event that experienced a delay in reporting their results for any reason would delay these tabulations for all of NAFA. Compounded by the fact that a clause was included that required that the delegates were to be tabulated from BOTH 2008 or 2009 racing years and a club would be given the ‘greater’ number of votes for whichever timeframe. This was done so that a club who may have earned fewer delegates in 2009 than they did in 2008 would not lose an earned delegate vote before they had the opportunity to vote it.

The change was made so newer clubs would not have to wait two years before casting their votes but, I don’t think the NAFA BoD really understood the amount of work involved in making this change.

What we need to understand is that these logistical problems that NAFA has taken on will not go away. Next year, the same potential for delays in preparing ballots for the election will occur. That is because the Election Committee will not know how many ballots to prepare or how many each club earned until all of the racing results are in. Then, and only then, can the ballots be laid out, printed up, coded and mailed.

That’s why the AGM was moved back to mid-January.

The Solution

1. It is vital to the future of NAFA to cut the amount of work we expect our volunteers to do in order to accomplish our elections.

2. It is highly desirable to cut costs and save our organization money.

3. We need to maintain an elective process; no matter what “form” that process takes.

4. We need to adopt a process that treats everybody as an “equal”.

5. We need to be able to demonstrate clear benefits to all of us by adopting change.

Why ‘One Person, One Vote’?

1. Moving from a “weighted” vote to a “one person, one vote” system simplifies things and does away with the need to calculate anything. This relieves an already overburdened Election Committee of any need to wait for racing results to be reported.

2. If we shift to all-electronic voting, we will totally eliminate the need for postage, the need for printing ballots, the need to place each ballot in an envelope. This will result in significant savings.

3. Instead of expecting NAFA to deliver “ballots” to people for participating in NAFA, I propose that people ask for a ballot by registering with NAFA and providing an active CRN as proof of participating in Flyball. We register to vote in governmental elections to either prove residency or other eligibility to vote. Not everyone who is eligible actually registers but, if you cannot provide basic information that proves you have an interest in the outcome of an election, can we trust you to vote for “what is best”?

4. Registration saves unnecessary work for NAFA by limiting any ballot preparation to just those interested in voting. It will also save any unnecessary expenditure for the same reason.

5. One person, one vote treats everybody equally without regard to number of dogs owned, number of events entered or amount of fees paid to NAFA.

Saving money and volunteers’ time and efforts is clearly a benefit. Treating everybody as an equal is vital to the future of NAFA so that we can demonstrate to anybody with doubts that no one can carve out an “unfair advantage” for themselves or their club, or their Region or their dogs, etc.

JMHO,

…..Chris